The New Industrial City within Detroit: An Archaeology of Urbanization and Civic Organization in Twentieth-Century Hamtramck

Abstract

Hamtramck, a small, century-old city completely enveloped by Detroit, is promoted by its leadership as “the world in 2.1 square miles.” This slogan invokes two inextricable facets of the city’s heritage and contemporary identity: Hamtramck’s longstanding reputation as a proud, working-class city that has always been welcoming to immigrants, and its significance as the former home of automotive manufacturer Dodge Main, whose operations between 1910 and 1979 positioned the city as a global industrial powerhouse. The Old Hamtramck Center Project combines historical, archaeological, and geospatial sources of data to examine the process of urban expansion in the new city, which included the dissonant relationships among local communities and the built environment. Archaeological investigations within Old Hamtramck Center consider how the city’s residents experienced the often inconsistent circumstances of rapid urbanization and civic organization as the rural village transformed into a crowded industrial city during the early 20th century.